Engines, including diesel engines, gasoline engines, gaseous fuel power engines, and other engines known in the art, may exhaust a complex mixture of air pollutants. These air pollutants may include solid material known as particulate matter or soot. Due to increased attention on the environment, exhaust emission standards have become more stringent and the amount of particulate matter emitted from an engine may be regulated depending on the type of engine, size of engine, and/or class of engine.
One method implemented by engine manufacturers to comply with the regulation of particulate matter exhausted to the environment has been to remove the particulate matter from the exhaust flow of an engine with a device called a particulate trap. A particulate trap is a filter designed to trap particulate matter and consists of a wire mesh or ceramic honeycomb medium. However, the use of the particulate trap for extended periods of time may cause the particulate matter to build up in the medium, thereby reducing the functionality of the filter and subsequently engine performance.
One method of improving the performance of the particulate trap may be to implement regeneration. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,694,727 (the '727 patent) issued to Crawley et al. on Feb. 24, 2004, describes an exhaust processor having a soot filter and filter regenerator. The filter regenerator includes a fuel powered burner that supplies fuel to the soot filter to regenerate the soot filter. The fuel powered burner includes a burner, a fuel supply, and a fuel valve. The fuel valve is interposed between the fuel supply and the burner to control the flow rate of fuel from the supply to the burner.
Although the fuel burner of the '727 patent may sufficiently regenerate the soot filter, it may be expensive, and unstable. In particular, because the fuel burner includes its own dedicated fuel supply, the additional components of the fuel supply may increase the cost of the power system package (e.g., the engine and exhaust processor). In addition, because no means for stabilizing the fuel flow from the supply to the burner is provided within the exhaust processor of the '727 patent, fluctuations in fuel pressure and/or flow rate could induce volatility in the regeneration process.
The fuel system of the present disclosure solves one or more of the problems set forth above.